


Homeless

by doctornerdington



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, Pre-Slash, Prose Poem, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:08:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2382815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctornerdington/pseuds/doctornerdington
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks so much, tiltedsyllogism, for including me in this challenge! Graceland is one of my all-time favourite albums, so this was fun.</p></blockquote>





	Homeless

Radio crackles, bursts static. Used to make him nauseous (dad passed out in front of the tv again; station off air; is he still breathing, Harry?); incoherence is now a relief. 

Words hurt. Language hurts. Better static than the horrible alternative: Many dead. Wounded incoming. Prep for surgery. Supplies low. Civilians dead. Air strike incoming. Morphine gone. Many dead. 

Heart sets a drum-beat pace, pounds relentlessly in his ears. Clear as a bell, his body tells him: tonight it could be you. Could be you. Could be you. Many dead: tonight it could be you.

Inshallah, he sometimes thinks; he breathes like a ghost already. 

Afghanistan is an oven. A hell of sand and dust and sweat; endless, violent cruelty. The Afghan widow wailing: “you are a strong wind, we are destroyed.” (He does not thank the unnecessary translator; her meaning is clear.)

Under the deadly, foreign sun, John dreams of a home that was never his: moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake. His imagination is vivid. He slips under the surface (cool, still, wet, dark), a body at peace. Soon he is asleep, lulled by lapping waves on a dark and distant shore.

Wakes to more hell. Outside his tent, a shattered body is rent open. In disbelief, somebody cries: why? Why? Why? 

He rises. He has no answers, but he has skilled and willing hands. Not enough to save a country, nor an army; not enough, he has discovered, even to save himself.

***

One year later, the same man in a different place. He still has no home, and thinks he never will. Thinks, with more and more longing, of the bullet in his gun while he tramps around London in a dislocated haze. After the blazing sun, everything is so very grey. This is not the home he longed for, not the glistening dark, not the comforting waves on a familiar shore. This is traffic and tourists and days stretched taut with boredom. He sees the terribly irony; doesn’t know how long he will survive it. 

And then. 

Somebody says hello. Hello hello hello. Hello hello hello – somehow subsumes the drum beat that even now fills his head with new and frightening variations (could be you, should be you, many dead, tonight it should be you): Afghanistan or Iraq? Hello hello hello. Eyes like moonlight on a midnight lake. Hello hello hello. A voice that sounds to parched and deadened ears like singing.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much, tiltedsyllogism, for including me in this challenge! Graceland is one of my all-time favourite albums, so this was fun.


End file.
